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Iron Bears
Legion History One of the first legions to be founded after the Lightning Bearers, the VI legiones astartes were created at a time when the Emperor's armies were first coming up against serious resistance. In need of more astartes to break this deadlock, the Emperor created the VI, using youths from the warlike Lake tribes of Nord Merica as its first warriors. Thanks to the extreme stability of the VI legion gene seed, many more aspirants survived the transformation into astartes than was the norm and the VI were soon fighting on the frontlines of the Unification Wars in a strength that surpassed all but the Lightning Bearers. However, it was soon discovered that these astartes of the VI were more human than their less nunerous bretheren of other legions. Within a very short space of time it was discovered that the gene seed of the VI took longer to mature than that of other legions, renderring freshly recruited legionnaires of the VI "human" for longer than the neophytes of other legions. While this length of time being between an astartes and an un augmented human passed, the mental effect of it didn't and so the legionnaires of the VI were always found to be more relatable by un augmented humans than their brothers of other legions. However, those Iron Bears who developped at a more usual rate were soon noticed to be excellent support troops and were rapidly deployed to serve such a role in campaigns being fought by their brother legions. The reason for this execellence in a supporting role was that the Iron Bears natural strength and fortitude saw them carry heavy weapons with ease and ther natural inclination to tinker saw them modify their equipment to suit whichever role they were called on to perform. In these early days, the favoured ranged weapon of the legion was the heavy bolter as it allowed them to staturate their enemies with fire before moving in to finish their shocked opponents with heavy chainswords that they were able to wield with ease. By the end of the Unification Wars, the VI legion were enormous compared to their fellow legions, easily dwarfing many save for the I, and were thus able to serve independent of other legions(in fact, the more unstable III legion was attached to the VI for a time). Over the following years, until the discovery of Daer'dd, the VI would subdue world after world by their relentless march forwards, simply soaking up anything that was fired at them and then massacring their usualy physicaly inferior opponents in melee. Because of this bullish method of fighting in which they relied on raw strength, courage and endurance more than any form of strategy, the VI were given the cognomen the Juggernauts by their fellow legions and those Imperial Army units who served alongside them. The only exception to this were the III legion, who instead called them Bjønir or Bears in the language of Jurfik. The Bear's Cradle One night, as the cold winter was drawing to a close, a small comet slammed into the shallow sand of a Huronian beach. However, it was not a comet but a small metal pod and from within it emerged a child, bleeding and shocked by the sudden crash he had survived. As he wondered the beaches of the world he had landed on, the child was found by a young couple, a maiden of great standing within one of the largest knightly households of Huron and the finest warrior of the tribe Niimkiikaa. Their union had dramatically changed the balance of power within the Three Fires sector and earned them many enemies. Already parents to a daughter, they now had a son and heir who they named Daer'dd. Daer'dd Niimkiikaa. However, unknown to them their adoptive son was no ordinary child but a son of the Emperor, a primarch. It would only take a few years before Daer'dd had matured sufficiently to begin taking to the field in war alongside his father, Noodiin Niimkiikaa. A master of a tomahawk and knife fighting as well as a skilled pysker, Noodiin had been a feared champion of the Niimkiikaa people in his youth and now, he took to the field alongside his son to do battle with his enemies and expand the territory of his people. In an age of las and accelerator weaponry, Noodiin was able to carve a bloody path through his enemies ranks and it was this art which he had taught his giant son, Daer'dd, who simply bulldozed his way through the hail of enemy fire until he was able to use his melee weapons. While Daer'dd and his adoptive father triumphed on a hundred battlefields and won almost 5000 miles for their people, these were not the only triumphs Daer'dd made in his youth. In addition to being pretenaturally fast and superlatively skilled warrior, Daer'dd had also undertaken the task of learning the smiths crafts. This he did in a remarkably short space of time and when he has learnt it, he began to transform Huron's technology. Studying the crude suits of power armour used by Huronian warriors, he improved upon them drastically and discovered how to work the metal known as adamantium. With these new technological innovations, the armies of the Niimkiikaa people swept all before them, uniting Huron behind a single leader. While Noodiin remained Chieftan of the Niimkiikaa, his adoptive son became King of Huron. It was around this time, as Daer'dd stepped into his role as King of all Huron, that a son was born of his father and mother, Aandeg Gitchi Noodiin Niimkiikaa. While Daer'dd didn't know it at the time, his greatest ally had just been born. Using his swollen army of tribal warriors, clad in a crude power armour somewhat similair to the Thunder armour of Terra and armed with tomahawks of adamantium, Daer'dd set out to unite the Three Fires sector. For another 10 years he fought across the worlds of Three Fires, with each victory bringing more warriors to his cause, each conquest easier than the last. When Daer'dd reached the final world of the Three Fires system, Accer Ferris, his army had grown so large that the king of this mighty fortress world bent the knee rather than waste his people's lives in a futile act of petty resistance. Over the next 20 years, all of Three Fires prospered under Daer'dd's benevolent rule. Every people found a role in his new kingdom. Ogryns served as the Kingdom's foot soldiers, combatting ork incursions alongside the knightly houses and towering titan legions of Three Fires while the Demiurge and Cult of Mars settled their differences, ensuring that the furnaces of Huron and Acer Ferris to glow white hot once more, while the beastmen watched over the agricultural fields and halflings the kitchens. So it was that the Emperor and his sons found the kingdom of Three Fires when they arrived to seek out Daer'dd in order to give him leadership of the VI legion, peaceful an prosperous. Taming of the Bear When Daer'dd first met his true father, the Emperor, his reaction was not to challenge him or even fight as was the reaction of many of his brothers. Instead, he bent the knee, surrendering the kingdom of Three Fires to his father's rule. However, instead of a shameful humiliation, this became a cause for great celebration as the Emperor instructed his son "Rise, Lord of Three Fires, for you have built a kingdom the likes of which all must respect. You must bow to no man". Following this decleration, the Imperial party knelt before Daer'dd, who simply laughed at this show of of respect and declared such a thing to un necessary, whereupon he ordered that a great feast be prepared for his guests. This great celebration lasted for three days and three nights as Daer'dd told his father and brothers of how he had conquered Three Fires and was in turn told of the Great Crusade and of the legions astartes. Accepting his task with humility, Daer'dd readily accepted command of the VI legion, the Juggernauts. Upon his being re unification with his legion he is said to have declared "You shall be no Juggernauts but Bears of iron and steel, fierce and hardy, ready to take the light of Imperial Truth to all corners of the galaxy and feast until the final sunset of the universe!". So it was that the legion took a new name: the Iron Bears. Following this re unification with their primarch, the Iron Bears adopted his nature as their own, particularly after the Iron Bears began to take in recruits from the Three Fires sector, specifically Huron. Of the first group of these young neophytes, many had been ambitious young warriors of Daer'dd's Totem Guard, among them Aandeg Niimkiikaa. While the Iron Bears remained as boisterous as ever, more emphasis was now placed upon the quality of an individual warrior rather than group cohesion and individual glory. They began to disregard ranged warfare in favour of closing with their enemy hand to hand as it was here that a warrior could truly shine and come into his own, when killing the enemy face to face. However, this was not all as the Iron Bears began to learn the art of a smith in emulation of their primarch, meaning no two astartes' equipment were the same as each would have modified his armour to suit his own tastes and desires. Yet it was not only the armour and way of war which changed upon Daer'dd being re united with his legion. The organization of the legion also changed, with the companies, or War Tribes, of the Iron Bears coming to reflect the structure of the warbands of Huron. The greater a warrior's individual glory and honour, the more warriors would follow him as part of his War Tribe, making the size of these units relatively fluid. However, there was one War Tribe whose size never changed: the Totem Guard. Akin to his bodyguard as King of Huron, Daer'dd's Totem Guard numbered 10,000 of the Iron Bears finest warriors, astartes who had proven themselves time and again of the decades of their service. Following their primarch's discovery, the VI also began to use a rising number of bionics, actively removing limbs in order to have a bionic put in its place. While this may seem non sensicle, it was an attempt to emulate the great deeds and strength of their father, a strength not even the gene enhanced bodies of the astartes could reach. The defeat of Waaagh! Skulkrak Shortly after the 100th year of the Great Crusade, the Iron Bears stumbled upon the ork empire of Warboss Skulkrak. Spanning nearly a dozen systems, the empire was a hornet's nest of greenskins and the Iron Bears arrival woke it. The campaign which followed would be one of the bloodiest in the history of the VI legion and it would eventually drag in the X legion as well as the fighting intensified, making it one of the largest campaigns in the history of the Great Crusade. When the Iron Bears first encountered Waaagh Skulkrak, they numbered only those of the legion who had been attached to the 76th expedition, around 27,000 Iron Bears(including the elite Totem Guard). Meeting the orks in battle, instead of using any complex stratagem, the Iron Bears simply hurled themselves into battle, seeking to hammer the orks into oblivion, fighting brute force with brute force. However, far from subjugating the vast horde of orks, this merely drew more of them to the fight as they saw in the Iron Bears a foe who would truly be a challenge to defeat. So it was that, as the ork's numbers grew, Daer'dd was forced to muster his entire legion, all 140,000 of the Iron Bears. With his iron fist assembled, Daer'dd drove on into the ork empire with renewed determination. However, while each battle fought against the greenskins was a victory, each was bought at a high price in VI legion blood and as the ranks of the Iron Bears were slowly whittled away, the greenskins numbers seemed to be unharmed or even to have grown. However, retreat was not an option. They would either triumph or they would die in the attempt yet it was becoming increasingly evident that Daer'dd and his sons, for all their formidable strength, lacked the numbers to see the campaign through and so, they sent out word requesting aid even as they pushed on, advancing ever further into the hornet's nest. Soon, their calls were answered by Niklaas and almost the entirety of the Fire Keepers legion. United with the implaccable X, the VI were able to resume their relentless advance and, while casualties were still heavy, they continued to be victorious over the orks. In these battles, the implaccable wall of the Fire Keepers often provided the anvil upon which the greenskins were broken by the unstoppable hammer of the Iron Bears. However, while this alliance enabled them to crush the orks, problems also arose from the two legions differences. On many an occasion, the headstrong sons of Huron would rush on ahead of the relentless advance of the Fire Keepers or the X would insist upon eradicating every trace of the greenskins before moving on while the Iron Bears sought to crush the larger bodies of orks, willing to leave the smaller groups until the main body of the enemy had been defeated. Yet despite these differences, the two legions pushed the orks back until, finally, they arrived at the heart of the beast's lair, the capital of Warboss Skulkrak's empire, Aexoris. It was upon the huge river valleys of Aexoris that the final great battle of the campaign was fought. With the full might of both legions deployed, the battle would last two days and the rivers running across the battle field would run black and red with the blood of both orks and astartes as the ranks of the Iron Bears and Fire Keepers clashed with the hordes of greenskins. However, as the two legions fought the orks and Niklaas strode through the orks, smashing dozens aside with his hammer at a time, Daer'dd and his Totem Guard charged Warboss Skulkrak and his nobz. Being almost as large as the giant primarch, Skulkrak was without a doubt the mightiest ork warlord ever encountered by the Imperium. However, when dawn finally came on the second day, it was the Bear who was victorious, having ripped off both of Skulkrak's arms and torn the beasts spin from its back. Seeing their leader defeated, the orks broke although many were slaughtered as they attempted to escape. While fighting in the former empire of Skulkrak would carry on for years after this final battle, as the orks fought each other and the Imperial Army cleansed the systems of their presences, the battle of Aexoris broke the back of the empire and the Waaagh. However, such victory came at a high price. Almost 18,000 Fire Keepers and more than 40,000 of the Iron Bears had been killed in the process of defeating the Waaagh. Yet after the campaign was finished, none could doubt the strength possessed by the VI. The taking of Melanaath As humanity began to spread across the stars at an ever increasing pace, they began to encounter ever more of the Eldar vessels known as Craftworlds. Each of these vessels was aeons old and each Craftworld seemed to have a different agenda to the last yet many were actively hostile to the Imperium. One such Craftworld was Craftworld Melanaath. Launching an assault of the Angva system, the Craftworld raised two Imperial worlds before it fled at the approach of the VI legion. However, they had gravely underestimated the VI and their primarch as well as the anger that the Eldar's actions would cause in Daer'dd. The primarch went into a great rage, the like of which the VI, his brothers and the crew of the Dragon of Autumn had never seen before. While he initially intended to give chase himself, he was persuaded by his brother Alexandros that he could not afford to do so, for he was needed on the frontlines of the Great Crusade. While he accepted this to be true, Daer'dd also knew that he would know no peace until Craftworld Menalaath was destroyed and the human lives lost avenged. So it was that he despatched Chief Damon Redd and the 4th and 5th Grand Wartribes to enact his will. As the Craftworld sought to escape and their liege returned to the front lines of the Great Crusade, the Iron King and his forces eagerly took up the chase. Rapidly catching up with the Craftworld, the vessels of the VI put their plan into action. Three VI legion ships, the Emeperor's Levaithan,Hideous Strength and Terrible Weight, closed with the Craftworld. Once within range, they fired their Ursus claws at the Eldar ship, pinning it in place and then loosed a volley of cannon fire and boarding torpedoes. These early boarding parties were then followed by units of Totem Guard terminators launching a teleport assault onto the Craftworld. The objective of these units was to secure landing zones for VI legion armour and knight support to board the Craftworld. For almost six hours the fighting around these zones swung back and forth between the two armies, with the Eldar desperately trying to throw the Iron Bears off of their Craftworld and the Iron Bears clinging on to the zones by whatever means necessary. However, the Eldar could not move the VI's elite and, while costly, the Totem Guard were able to secure the landing zones, allowing the 4th to board the Craftworld with armour and knights. Over the next five days, the Iron Bears would engage the Eldar in a brutal battle amidst the winding corridoors and fake forests of the Craftworld. In this savage battle, there were no front lines, only individual combats. Iron Bears squads were frequently ambushed by units of striking scorpions or aspect warriors as they fought their way through the Craftworld and no mercy was given nor was any expected. By the fifth day, the Craftworld resembled an abattoir more than what it had once been. It's forests burned and the ships itself was gradually being blasted apart as the Iron Bears destroyed many vital structures within it and slaughtered it's inhabitants, earning the nickname the "Dread Blades" from the Eldar. During this savage fighting, many warriors of the VI accomplished deeds of martial skill and determination that are worthy of their own epics. One Iron Bear, Enoch Awanjish held out against the Eldar for four hours despite having lost his legs below the knee and having to amputate his own left hand. Using the bodies of his dead brethren for cover, he fought off four separate attacks by Eldar aspect warriors before being relieved and was later promoted to sergeant for his actions. Then there was Chief Ah'nek, the "giant", who slew countless Eldar warriors. However, by far the most heroic deed was that accomplished by Damon Redd himself, who bested an avatar of Khaine in single combat after a duel lasting almost an hour and slaughtered every Eldar he fought, his kill count exceeding one thousand. By the time the battle was over, Melanaath was a graveyard, a hollow shell of what it had once been. Every last one of it's inhabitants had been butchered and vengeance exacted for the razed Imperial worlds. However, the price payed by the VI had been heavy, with them losing nearly 10,000 brothers amidst the corridors of Melanaath. Such is the price payed to keep safe the Imperial domain. The Breaking of the Iron Citadel Siege An urgent request for reinforcements brought the Iron Bears to the Auretian Technocracy, where the Shepherds of Eden were aiding the Auretians against a vast Ork invasion. While Wartribes peeled off to meet the greenskins on several worlds, Daer'dd went straight to Aureus itself with the 4th Wartribe, where a Chapter of the Shepherds and the Brotherhood of Aureus held off the Orks below the Iron Citadel. The Shepherds and the mortal warriors of Aureus fought bravely, and the Technocracy boasted remarkable weapons and defences, but they were gradually losing ground to the massive force arrayed against them. The mountainous landscape around the stronghold worked against the Bears as much as it did the invaders, preventing them from simply flanking the Orks. The greenskins were lead by a tech-caste and fielded bizarre, devastating siege weapons, which made it difficult to hold the defences against them or land further reinforcements, let alone attempt a drop-pod assault. These had to be neutralised if the Orks were to be driven back, and in any case the Bears preferred the opportunity to fight in open battle rather than hunkered down on the battlements. To this end Daer'dd orchestrated a feint and, after landing as many Astartes as he could risk behind the lower walls of the Iron Citadel, allowed the Orks to break a gate into the lower rings surrounding the fortress. As the horde instinctively charged forward they were caught and destroyed in carefully prepared kill zones within the walls. Daer'dd had consulted carefully with the Shepherds and Brotherhood in divising these traps and the Orks suffered ruinous casualties under the volume of fire. In the confusion, several Clan companies deployed over the walls with the Primarch and Damon Redd at their head. Charging into the enemy ranks, they swiftly reached the vast siege weapons, sabotaging or even turning them on one another. Despite their prowess and heroism, it would have been a suicide attack if not for the Primarch's careful planning. The rest of the defenders pushed the greenskins back into the outermost defences, and now the Bears could bring their vaunted mechanised units to the surface. These broke out from the defences, shattering the Ork forces as they went, while assault marines cleansed the ruined outer city. It was a costly tactic, but incredibly effective and, with the death of the Orks Warboss at the hands of Chief Captain Cass and Ar'assa Redd's Knight walker, the invasion unraveled completely. After a short clean-up campaign the Technocracy gladly joined with the Imperium, with both the Shepherds and Bears earning great acclaim for their actions. Category:Legions Category:Loyalist